Campaign outrage — and it’s only August

Fake political news sites! Phony ballot designations! Angry charges and countercharges! It must be August in an election year.

With the Nov. 4 election still nearly three months away and cash short for all but the best-known campaigns (See Brown, Gov. Jerry), the dog days of August allow political types to get creative, finding effective — and cheap — ways to keep their candidates in the news.

Take, for example, a series of local websites put up this week by the National Republican Congressional Committee in about two dozen tight congressional races, including three in California. Given innocuous, generic names like Sacramento (or Central Valley or San Diego) Update, each features less-than-complimentary descriptions of the local Democrat.

It’s not until the very bottom of each webpage, below the click-to-view promotional video for the GOP candidate (“Valadao: The Son of Immigrants”), that readers learn that the website is “Paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee.”

Democrats and their allies instantly called foul. The sites are nothing more than fake news camouflaged as legitimate local information outlets, they argued.

The sites “peddle misinformation,” said Tyrone Gayle, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The GOP candidates’ “Washington allies,” he said, “are at it again with a blatant attempt to mislead voters.”

Not surprisingly, Republican leaders don’t see it that way.

“Welcome to the 21st century,” said Daniel Scarpinato, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Voters are online, and we have to reach them to get the truth out about the Democratic candidates.”

Besides, “it’s baloney to say that these look like news sites,” Scarpinato said. Democrats “are probably just jealous they didn’t think of this first.”

Even the most casual follower of politics would have to squint pretty hard to see the websites as anything other than partisan attacks, especially when the headlines atop the pages all read pretty much like the one aimed at Rep. Scott Peters, a first-term Democrat from San Diego: “Scott Peters Can’t Escape Criticisms of Hypocrisy, Self-Interest.”

It’s not just Democrats who have found something to complain about this August, however,

Rep. Julia Brownley, left, in 2011 when she served in the state Assembly. On the right is Assemblyman Gil Cedillo. Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

Brownley, a former assemblywoman, “attempts to present herself as a longtime resident of Ventura County, when in fact she’s spent most of her life in Santa Monica and Malibu,” Mike Osborn, the GOP county chairman, said in a statement. “As far as we know, she was never seen in Ventura County before deciding to run for Congress two years ago.”

The ballot designation “is both misleading and inaccurate (and) will create confusion among voters,” Osborn said.

Those would apparently be the confused voters who elected Brownley to the open seat in 2012.

The main problem with Osborn’s complaint, though, is that Brownley actually is a Ventura County congresswoman. While 6.078 voters in the 26th Congressional District live in Los Angeles County, 352,745 are Ventura County residents, giving that county more than 98 percent of the district’s registration.

While Osborn and the local Republicans didn’t win their challenge, they’ve still managed to take a whack at Brownley in what is likely to be a close election battle with GOP Assemblyman Jeff Gorell of Camarillo (Ventura County) — for little more than the cost of an e-mail and a court filing.

And every angry published complaint GOP leaders get about their “fake news” websites brings hundreds of more online hits from people who probably would never have seen them otherwise.